Some of the fish which can be found in Irish supermarkets, including Lidl, Aldi, and Tesco chains, are linked to human rights abuses against Chinese fishing fleet workers, a US documentary team has claimed.
Ian Urbina, a former investigative journalist with The New York Times, is heading up The Outlaw Ocean Project, with its documentary crew investigating the claims.
The documentary crew claims that Irish supermarkets have sold seafood products which have originated from vessels and processing plants where workers are subject to human rights abuses, including death from violence, beatings, wages being withheld, excessive working hours, passport confiscation, the restriction of medical care, and debt bondage.
The four-year project the documentary makers board fishing vessels across the world, where workers have “often pleaded with them to be rescued, or at least tell their family members they are alive.”
The report details how the filmmakers resorted to following vessels on a speed boat when they were not able to access the ships, or got information through using plastic bottles containing questionnaires for staff onboard.
The documentary makers tracked a supply chain from fishing vessels to Irish supermarkets, with the programme alleging that at least two European white fish importers import pollock and cod from Chinese processors who are using forced labour from Uyghurs, one of China’s largest ethnic groups, who have been subjected to work in industries across the country.
From @ian_urbina: How a tiny team of journalists held the world’s biggest fishing fleet to account https://t.co/OWqo45cZym pic.twitter.com/2ku5L08QBr
— TIME (@TIME) October 26, 2023
The imports then supply Nomad Foods, a European company which had an annual turnover of $3 billion last year, and owns brands including Bird’s Eye.
Unibond Seafood International, is one of the company’s European importers, which is alleged to purchase cod and pollock from Qingdao Tianyuan – a Chinese processing plant believed to have used Uyghur forced labour as far back as 2018 and as recently as April of this year.
NorthSeafood Holland is the second of the company’s importers, which is said to have imported fish from Yantai Longwin Foods and Yantai Sanko Fisheries, both of whom are alleged to have received labourers from Uyghue under a programme imposed by the Chinese State.
In October, members of the European Parliament urged the European Commission to tackle China’s fishing practices, which they denounced as “deplorable.”
Several MEPs spotlighted labour conditions onboard Chinese vessels, with some mentioning recent media reports covering industrial-scale use of Uygur forced labour.
It follow the passing of the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act by the United States Congress in 2021, which declared that all goods produced “wholly or in part” by Xinjiang workers or by ethnic minorities in the Chinese region should be presumed to have involved state-imposed forced labour, therefore being forbidden to enter the U.S.
Since June of 2022, more than a billion dollars’ worth of products have been seized which were believed to be connected to Xinjiang – among them clothing, pharmaceuticals, and electronics. Commentators have lamented how the seafood industry is thought to largely have fallen under the radar until recently.
The Investigation by the Outlaw Ocean Project found nine large seafood companies in China have received at least 2,000 Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities from the Xinjiang province in East China, and may have ended up in Irish and UK supermarkets through the Chinese supplier.
In the past several days since our investigation was published by @NewYorker there has been a lot of follow-up coverage and activity. This thread offers some highlights: 🧵 pic.twitter.com/dts7Qany2W
— Ian Urbina (@ian_urbina) October 13, 2023
The documentary crew received hundreds of pages of internal company newsletters, along with reports from local news outlets, trade data, satellite and mobile phone imagery, and a database of testimonies from Uyghur
Outlaw Ocean reviewed hundreds of pages of internal company newsletters, local news reports, a database of Uyghur testimonies, trade data and satellite and cell phone imagery to verify the location of processing plants.
The documentary makers also verified that the Douyin users had initially registered in Xinjiang.
Laying out the links to various supermarkets, the documentary claims that Aldi’s own-brand catch in the UK market can be linked to vessels involved in human rights abuses, naming the Tasty Catch and Fishmonger brands. It is alleged that these vessels supply a big seafood processor in the Shandong province of China.
Lidl’s own brand squid, which is marketed under the Eridanous range, is sold at stores throughout Europe, including in Ireland.
The Outlaw Ocean Project claims that at least one Irish importer, Pan Euro Foods, employs a processor that uses Uyghur labour. The distributor supplies products including Diggers fish goujons which can be found on the shelves of Irish retailers, including at Tesco.
A clip from the documentary shows Ian Urbina throwing a bottle containing interview questions inside a Chinese squid boat, whenever Chinese ships would not allow them access. The reporters can be seen trailing the ships in a small boat to get close enough to toss the plastic bottles inside, weighed down with rice, and containing interview questions, a pen, cigarettes, and sweets.
Through this tactic, the team were able to secure a number of replies from deckhands, who provided phone numbers for family back home and then threw the bottles back into the water to be picked up. The report also features interviews with family members and with 24 additional crew members.
Ian Urbina, director of The Outlaw Ocean Project, told Sky News:
“The human rights and labour crimes – you’re dealing with human trafficking, you’re dealing with death by violence, wage theft, blocking of timely access to medical care, criminal level of neglect in the form of Beriberi, people that are essentially deprived of the key nutrients to be able to survive.
“Vessels that go dark and turn off their transponders and they disappear – all these are well documented crimes as well that are in the marine space.”
The Irish News, meanwhile, reporting on the story, contacted Tesco, Lidl and Aldi regarding alleged links to the human rights abuses.
A spokesperson for ALDI Ireland said:
“We have a rigorous process in place working with international authorities to guarantee our fish has been caught legally and is fully traceable. The exploitation of vulnerable workers has no place in our business or supply chain and any breaches to our strict policies will be investigated.”
A spokesperson for the British Retail Consortium, responding on behalf of Tesco, said: “Protecting the welfare of people and communities in supply chains is fundamental to our members’ sourcing practices. Forced labour has no place in our retailers supply chains, and any practices that fall short of our high standards will not be tolerated.”
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Unibond Seafood International told the newspaper they were “very surprised” by the allegations of forced labour in the Qiingdao Tianyuan processing plant, which only accounted for “a negligible part in our supply base”.
It said all goods were sourced with “full knowledge and approval of customers,” and that third party audits were completed in line with supply chain practices and requirements. Unibond said it had an “unwavering dedication to ethical and responsible supply chain practices” and was committed to exclusively sourcing products from “thoroughly vetted” suppliers.
Lidl, in its response to The Outlaw Ocean Project, said it was investigating the claims.
Rongcheng Wangda, the group that owned the vessel, has denied any wrongdoing, according to Sky News. It says it has referred the allegations to the China Overseas Fisheries Association for investigation; no criminal case has been brought.
Speaking to Sky News, which investigated claims that products were also ending up at UK supermarkets including Iceland and Sainsburys, David Hammond, chief executive of the NGO Human Rights at Sea, said that the problem is that “nobody knows” what is going on at sea.
“The reality is that because it’s out of sight, out of mind, you know, a lot of that is happening over the horizon, quite literally,” Mr Hammond told the outlet.
“Nobody knows what’s going on. So you then have the issue of enforcement and there is a massive lacuna in the enforcement issue from coastal states and international waters.
“And without enforcement, you don’t have a deterrent effect and without deterrent effect, you have impunity.”
Before examining Chinese treatment of fishing industry workers how about the NYT examing what is happening in their backyard? Where are the tens of millions of illegals who have been pouring across the southern US border living and working? How many of them are working for low wages in atrocious conditions indebted to the smugglers who helped them get in? When criminals help impoverished and struggling people, it is not out of the kindness of their hearts but because this has become a lucrative business facilitated by politicians.
“the problem is that “nobody knows” what is going on at sea”. True and that really applies to all fisheries around the world, even the highly regulated Common Fisheries Policy. The high seas are the last wild frontier, spotter planes and fisheries “protection” vessels notwithstanding.
And if one is talking about slavery and exploitation, why stop at Chinese fisheries? Prostitution in much of the West is based on foreign slave labour controlled by foreign thugs, and then look at the vast quantities of consumer goods imported from China & other Asian countries, mostly produced under appalling conditions, not to mention all those rare earths so essential for the net zero religion and its handmaiden, the electric car battery, mined by child labour in Africa and China.